Ethereum (ETH 5.87%) founder Vitalik Buterin recently confirmed that if everything goes to plan, Ethereum will complete its merge to a proof-of-stake blockchain this August. In this Motley Fool Live segment from "The Crypto Show," recorded on June 1, Fool.com contributors Jon Quast, Chris MacDonald, and Travis Hoium consider how this change will impact investors.
Jon Quast: So, the Ethereum merge. I'm sure, both of you guys saw this. As everyone probably is aware by now, Ethereum has been its entire existence, a proof-of work blockchain, just like Bitcoin, goes through the whole consensus mechanism where they solve this hash problem and compete. It's very energy-intensive. It can be slow, it can have scaling problems. They're moving to a proof-of-stake blockchain. They've been working on it for years now.
Here on May 20th at the Web3 Developers Summit, one particular Ethereum developer actually put out there that this merge, they are expecting it to happen in August, and then the Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, subsequently coming out and confirming that as long as everything is going correctly, so long is everything is going to plan, which has probably a big if, but if everything goes to plan, yes, August should be when this mergers consummated. They've already started a very important trial run here. The Ropsten, I believe I'm saying that right, Test Net launched two days ago and the actual merge process on the Test Net is supposed to start tomorrow. I'll just leave it right there for a second. Anything that you guys want to add here? It seems like this is a very big step toward this merge becoming a reality.
Chris MacDonald: Yes, it is. There's a series of mergers that need to take place. I think the issue with the term Ethereum merge is that users or investors are just really talking about the final merge which is going to happen August. But this merge between, I guess it was the Ropsten Test Net going live. I think there's two more mergers that need to happen before the final merge with the Beacon chain happens. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting process and we'll see how this plays out. I didn't actually see that it was tomorrow so that's quite interesting. I'm sure we'll have lots to watch moving forward.
Travis Hoium: The big thing to look forward is do we have any performance issues. We'll get those Solana in a little bit, but you can test everything you want. Invariably, there's going to be something that happens that isn't expected. That'll be interesting to see because I think the goal for everybody involved is that this makes the Ethereum blockchain more scalable, more cost effective, less energy-intensive. There's a lot riding on this for a lot of people.
Jon Quast: Indeed, it's interesting reading through the whole official blogposts from Ethereum on what actually is technically taking place tomorrow and in subsequent days. There is a lot for these developers to input and to make sure that they're all doing it exactly the same and at the right time, there's a sequence of events. It's not just you just go ahead and hit the button. No, this has to happen, and then this has to happen and everybody has to be on the same page throughout the entire thing. It's really way over my head, I will not be participating [laughs] in this Test Net. That's for sure.
